The U.S. General Services Administration said this week it has finalized the transfer of the historic Watch Hill Lighthouse to a private nonprofit and officially executed the deed to the property for its new owner, the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association.
The planned transfer was first announced last July by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. It set off an outcry for months from fishermen and shoreline access advocates who worried giving the federal land to a private nonprofit in Watch Hill would threaten future public use of the popular fishing spot.
The Lighthouse Keepers said it intended to maintain public access to the property but would not share the application the group submitted to the National Park Service for the property.
Application materials released through a federal Freedom of Information Act request showed the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association’s attorney had told the federal government the group could not guarantee public access to the property, because it did not believe explicit public rights existed over the narrow Lighthouse Road that’s long been presumed to be private.
Reed’s office contacted the National Park Service and General Services Administration to reiterate “that continued public access must be central to a conveyance agreement,” his spokesperson, Chip Unruh, said last year.
But the General Services Administration said it was unable to include public access guarantees to the roughly four-acre property over the access road after looking for potential public rights in real estate records and communicating with Westerly Town Solicitor William Conley, who was tasked with investigating the status of Lighthouse Road.
“After extensive research the government determined that there was no instrument on record regarding public access in Lighthouse Road that can be incorporated into the deed,” GSA spokesperson Paul Hughes said in an email Wednesday.
Hughes was unable to provide a copy of the deed to The Public’s Radio before deadline, but by law the transfer is required to be consistent with the Lighthouse Keepers’ application for the property.
This is the second time in recent years Reed has been unable to protect coastal access rights in the Watch Hill area. In 2020, he and Rhode Island’s other U.S. senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, facilitated through legislation the deauthorization of Watch Hill Cove as a federal navigation area, which ended decades of federal public mooring access protections and allowed the Watch Hill Yacht Club to control the majority of moorings in the cove.
Unruh did not respond to multiple requests for comment emailed to him this week about the lighthouse transfer.
News of the official transfer without public access guarantees came as a blow to shoreline access advocates as well as some Westerly Town Council members who had made a last minute effort to take ownership of the lighthouse. That attempt was largely seen as an improbability because of the strict transfer process outlined under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.
“We fought the law and the law won,” Councillor Dylan LaPietra said Wednesday. “Somebody with clout said, ‘You gotta make this transfer and that’s it.’”
“You know how many billionaires live on that road,” LaPietra said.
LaPietra said the lighthouse issue will likely be taken up by the Westerly Town Council during the executive session period of their next meeting on Monday night. The town still has the option of using its legal research on Lighthouse Road to pursue a public right-of-way to the lighthouse property, although that could lead to future litigation.
Property owners along Lighthouse Road had submitted matching letters of support to the National Park Service for the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association, saying they favored the group because they trust the organization “to manage the public access in a safe manner that balances the public interest in the historic lighthouse and grounds with the private interests of the Lighthouse Road owners.”
The Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association has helped run the property since the 1980s under an agreement with the federal government. Rules posted at the property ban recreational activities aside from “casual strolling” and sightseeing. The group’s president said last year the Lighthouse Keepers can’t prevent fishermen from using public trust land adjacent to the lighthouse property.
Shoreline access advocates and fishermen are wary of the Lighthouse Keepers because of current policies that block fishermen after hours and actions taken by other Watch Hill groups they say are aimed at privatizing the shore. Last year, the Watch Hill Fire District and Watch Hill Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the town of Westerly and state of Rhode Island, challenging the public’s right to access Napatree Point and asking a judge to invalidate a town-designated right-of-way to the popular beach and conservation area.
When reached for comment about the lighthouse transfer on Wednesday, Jim Milardo, of the Rhode Island Mobile Sportfishermen, expressed disappointment and referred to different Watch Hill entities as if they were one and the same.
“The fire districts have the money, which gives them the power, and they do whatever the hell they want,” said Milardo, who has also opposed the Weekapaug Fire District on shoreline access issues. “It’s the same thing we know that keeps happening decade after decade with this Westerly [shoreline] access stuff.”
“They get those legal documents and the legal right to do what they want to do,” Milardo said. “Time is gonna show what happens next spring [at the Watch Hill Lighthouse property] and everything like that when the fishermen want to go out there. We’ll have to see what they do.”
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org
